


Of Dragons and Pillows

by Araminia16



Series: Of Growing Up [1]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: D&D, F/M, MY BABIES, cute misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-13
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2019-02-01 15:56:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12708165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Araminia16/pseuds/Araminia16
Summary: It's game night and Hopper lets Eleven out of the house to join them for the first time since the Snow Ball. It's a bit of a learning curve for everyone.





	Of Dragons and Pillows

I think I might be spoiling you guys with like a story every night or something. My muse keeps firing up for stuff. I’ll probably have them have some sort of an awkward discussion in my next one or the one after. I’ve got two more planned but more may be forthcoming. I’m just not sure how I want to do the Talk between Mike and El. 

However my next one may not be up for two or three days. My husband’s grandmother just died so we will have to do stuff with that and I work full time and have a kid so my free time is only when he sleeps before I go to bed. Hope everyone had a good weekend!

I reordered and added my first story to the series so that it made more sense. :)

XxOxX

About a month after the Snowball Mike, after much begging and pleading and yardwork for Hopper managed to get him to agree to let Eleven come to his house under the cover of darkness and a hooded jacket and gave them a strict curfew of three hours only. 

He was sure that Eleven had done some begging and pleading of her own and they talked nearly every night. Sometimes it was just for a minute or two, just to hear each other’s voices, sometimes it was longer if she had a question or if either of them had a story. Sometimes he called when the party was over and each of them got to talk with her too. Those times he felt jealous, but knew that they cared about her too despite the fact that he wanted her all to himself all the time.

But tonight was a game night and he couldn’t wait to introduce her to his favorite game and he hoped that she would like it. Even Max was coming. The two girls had settled out their differences during the Snowball dance and now they were starting to become friends as well. 

As he meticulously set up the adventure he knew that it had to be a short journey for it only to last three hours, especially when he was going to make everyone reroll a new group for an adventure. But he knew that Will, at least had rerolled a Cleric for this adventure. He wasn’t sure about Dustin and Lucas but they could spend a few minutes on character creation as long as it didn’t take forever. 

The chairs (including two more) had just been put into place when he heard the doorbell ring and raced up the stairs, brushing past his mom who was talking on the phone and wrenched open the door. Curly hair and a grin announced the arrival of Dustin who waved and walked past him, then he spotted Will getting out of his mom’s car and he could barely hear their conversation, which ended with Will’s exasperated and loud sigh as he shut the door. When he walked up he sighed, “My mom wants me to call every hour.”

Mike shrugged, “Won’t take that long. Maybe we can stretch it out.” 

Will sighed with his folder and made his way to the basement. 

Max and Lucas came next, not together, but not far apart from each other either. Lucas’s bike was parked next to the door and Billy’s car revved down the street. Max practically had to leap out of a moving vehicle for all the time that he stopped for her to get out but she made it in with a quick smile to Mike and Lucas’s urging to hurry downstairs so they could get started on telling her all the rules. 

Mike waited next to the door, feeling more and more crestfallen as the minutes ticked by when he saw the flash of lights and leapt across the room to open the door. Hopper’s jeep came to a full stop and he tapped his foot urgently, waiting to see her again. 

The door opened and a small figure exited the jeep, bogged down with so much baggy clothing that if he didn’t know that it was her he would have been very confused. 

She raced up and collided with him and he wrapped his arms around her and they stayed like that, in the doorway for longer than they probably should have but it felt so good to hug her again. “Wheeler! She gets three hours! That’s it.” 

“Yes, Chief!” He shouted back. “Come on in. You can meet my mom really quick and then we can go downstairs.”

Eleven pulled her hood down and she gave him a smile. Those curls that were styled perfectly at the Snow Ball were wild and errant now and still looked just as beautiful now as she did then. He took her hand and they walked into the house, stopping by his mom who just stared at the girl that her son was holding hands with. “Mom, this is El--. I mean Jane Hopper.”

Karen Wheeler could only really stare but smiled, “Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too.” Eleven smiled. 

Karen must have missed something deep in her son’s life for him to be bringing by a girl that she hasn’t ever seen before but before she could interrogate her son any further he made his exit. 

“Well, now you’ve met. Let’s go.” Mike pulled her away and they raced downstairs to join the rest of the group, who was now arguing over something. 

“She can’t be a zoomer. There’s no Zoomer class, Lucas.” Dustin fired at the two across the table. 

“Can’t we make up a class?” Lucas shot back.

“No.” Mike broke in as he pulled out the chair next to him for Eleven to sit in. 

“Hey El!” They chimed in simultaneously and she gave them all a bright smile.

“Hi.” 

“Why the hell not?” Lucas huffed out. 

“Because then we would have to make shit up and I don’t want to do that tonight.” Mike huffed back.

“Well what can we do then?” 

Mike turned to Max, who was looking really confused. “What sorts of things do you want your character to be able to do?” 

“Move fast, jump, talk fast. Stuff I do.” 

“How about a thief?” Will spoke up from his notes. “A thief is based in dex and int mostly with some charisma thrown in if she rolls high enough.”

“What’s a thief do in the game?” Max brushed her hair back behind her ear while she focused on Will intently.

“Steals stuff, scales cliffs and down chasms, can hide in the shadows and make devastating backstabs and find traps. We haven’t had one yet.” 

“Good idea, Will.” 

“Sure. Why not. Lucas has told me some stuff about the game but how do you make choices and stuff?” Max asked. 

“You won’t have to worry too much about that. Each member of our party is starting over for this adventure.” 

“Come on, Mike. I thought you were joking. My dwarf has a +2 axe! That’s bullshit.” 

“You don’t have to keep the fucking character Dustin. Just for today. Your dwarf will live again.” 

That seemed to placate him and he settled back to dig through his backpack and pull out his character folder and put a new sheet out. “What to do. Probably another warrior…what race?” Then he started mumbling while pulling out his dice bag and beginning to roll.

Mike turned to Eleven, who was just sitting and watching them all. “I have a character sheet for you too if you want.” 

Her brown eyes darted back and forth between the game and Mike and finally she shook her head. “No. But I would like to read more on it.”

“Sure.” He brought out his handbook, which was actually in pretty good condition considering the fact that he used it so often. “I know it all pretty much by heart now.”

She nodded and took the book with another smile and he returned it, letting his hand linger on hers for a moment before turning back to look at his friends. 

Max and Lucas, with help from Will were explaining the basics and handing dice to Max for her stat rolls. 

This continued for about ten more minutes before everyone decided they were ready to start. 

Eleven had taken up an awkward position with her knees up and back against his shoulder, which hampered his ability to move somewhat but she seemed like she was comfortable so he didn’t mind at all. 

“You will start your journey in a small fishing village…” Mike began.

The game went on with each of them making their own mistakes and choices as the game progressed. Finally, during a fight with a wolf, Dustin rolled a 20 and the entire room erupted in cheers and high fives as he beheaded the creature with a swing of his axe. 

“Take that you bastards!” He roared and rolled again, landing a 10 causing him to miss the next swing and the next wolf to give him a minor wound to the arm. 

Eleven spoke for the first time since they started as her attention was split between the book and the game. Mike noted that she was on the chapter about races, “Is a 20 good?” 

“It’s awesome. We play it just a little different but a 20 means that you do the best that you possibly can. Most of the time it’s an instant kill, sometimes we make them roll again for the crit but usually on the low level stuff it’s just one roll.” Mike explained and she nodded.

The continued playing and Will rolled a 20 to heal, healed a severely wounded Dustin to full health which spilled over to heal Max and Lucas to nearly full health as well. 

They continued to play and nearly every roll ended up a 20, they were getting it so often that Will started to think something fishy was going on. He had a bit of an inner radar on strange things since his possession and kidnapping into another dimension. Finally though he noticed that Eleven was very focused on the die and slammed the table with a fist. “Ha!” 

The rest of the group jumped in their seats and he pointed at Eleven with playful accusation. “You’ve been messing with the dice, haven’t you?”

“What the hell, Will? You can just point your finger at her. She hasn’t done anything.”

“There’s been an awful lot of 20s, Mike.” Dustin remarked.

Eleven looked much like a deer in the headlights, “I….I…”

“It’s okay Eleven.” Will soothed, smiling at her expression to help ease her sudden fear.

“I did. I made it to be a 20 each time because it made you happy. Was that a bad thing?” She sounded confused in the way that she was when they first found her and started teaching her about things and words she had missed out on growing up in the lab.

“No. But the reason 20s are so awesome is because they don’t happen that often. It makes them special and if they happen all the time then it’s less fun.” Mike told her gently and she turned to face them with the book in her hand. 

“But isn’t it easier?”

“Yeah. But sometimes it is way more fun to do it the harder way. It makes us use our characters more and learn how to do things differently. We learn from the low rolls.” Lucas chimed in. 

“Oh. I’m sorry.” She put the book down and Mike lifted his arm to bring her in for a short hug to comfort her. 

“Don’t apologize. It’s still fun.” Will shrugged. “But…since you’ve broken the law of the game we are forced to intervene.” The smaller boy leapt up and grabbed a pillow, launching it at the two. Eleven managed to catch it with her powers before the other boys jumped in and started throwing pillows at each other. 

The D&D game devolved quickly into a shouting match peppered by feathers and laughter and by the time Hopper came by to get her she was exhausted and so much happier than she had been since the Snowball. 

Mike walked her up the stairs and to the door. “I’m sorry about the game, Mike.”

“Don’t be. It was just a fake game anyway, to help Max and you.” He shrugged and fidgeted anxiously. 

“Mike?”

“Yeah?”

“I liked it. Can I play with you guys again?”

“Yeah! Keep the book too and read up. Just don’t fix the dice again.” He joked, “And you can maybe even come over for movie night and stuff too. And when you go to school we can share some classes but I don’t know if Hopper will be able to put you in. I could ask him about coming over to catch you up in school.” He was rambling he knew, but before losing his nerve, he pressed a kiss to her cheek, then another peck to her lips and she blushed before giving him a smile and opening the door. Hopper was starting to let off a series of irritated honks from his jeep. She turned away from him with an irritated huff and walked to his jeep and after settling into the seat she waved and smiled at him. And he was still watching her as the disappeared down the street.

He couldn’t wait to see her again and even after he went back inside he was planning on how he was going to make that happen next.

XxOxX

I wanted to write something lighter, sometimes I don’t get the group dynamic down just right but I think it would definitely be something that she would do to make them all happy.


End file.
